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“The bill also allows local communities to choose to establish needle exchanges”

During the next few weeks, members of the Kentucky House and Senate will try to hammer out an agreement on a bill to address growing heroin abuse in Kentucky. Each chamber has passed its own measure.

The version that emerges will reflect whether legislators see the heroin epidemic as a criminal problem or a public health crisis, the term used by House Judiciary Committee chairman John Tilley, sponsor of the House bill.

Tilley, D-Hopkinsville, made an eloquent, informed and impassioned case that unless it’s treated as a public health crisis, “we’ll be digging ourselves out of this until we’re all dead and gone.”

“The bill also allows local communities to choose to establish needle
exchanges”

During the next few weeks, members of the Kentucky House and
Senate will try to hammer out an agreement on a bill to address growing
heroin abuse in Kentucky. Each chamber has passed its own measure.

The
version that emerges will reflect whether legislators see the heroin
epidemic as a criminal problem or a public health crisis, the term used
by House Judiciary Committee chairman John Tilley, sponsor of the House
bill.

Tilley, D-Hopkinsville, made an eloquent, informed and
impassioned case that unless it’s treated as a public health crisis,
“we’ll be digging ourselves out of this until we’re all dead and gone.”

As the Kentucky General Assembly gears up for a
shortened session and to tackle heroin legislation, many anti-heroin
activists say proposed bills don’t go far enough.

One of the leading bills proposed to combat Kentucky’s heroin
epidemic gives an addict a better chance at receiving treatment if he is
arrested than if he tries to check into a rehab clinic.

Another
of the multiple proposals is expected to include a provision that would
allow needle exchanges, an approach favored by public health officials
trying to ward off the spread of hepatitis or HIV, but abhorred by
conservatives not willing to appear soft on crime.

A third ups the
criminal penalties for dealing heroin and other opiates without
increasing any funding for treatment for addicts.

As the Kentucky General Assembly gears up for a shortened session and to tackle heroin legislation, many anti-heroin activists say proposed bills don’t go far enough.

One of the leading bills proposed to combat Kentucky’s heroin epidemic gives an addict a better chance at receiving treatment if he is arrested than if he tries to check into a rehab clinic.

Another of the multiple proposals is expected to include a provision that would allow needle exchanges, an approach favored by public health officials trying to ward off the spread of hepatitis or HIV, but abhorred by conservatives not willing to appear soft on crime.

A third ups the criminal penalties for dealing heroin and other opiates without increasing any funding for treatment for addicts.

The city’s medical services director, Dr. James Dunford told a City
Council committee Nov. 13 that more than 2.5 million dirty needles were
properly disposed of since the start of the city’s Clean Syringe
Exchange Program.

Presenting the Safe Point San Diego Clean Syringe Exchange Program
Annual Report for fiscal year 2014 Dunford then asked Council members to
imagine the stack of 2.5 million dirty needles: “Put that at Petco Park and see what kind of pile you’d be looking at.”

Dunford told members of the Public Safety & Livable Neighborhoods
Committee the program has taken in 405,416 dirty needles just in the
last fiscal year. He said the program has collected 276,958 more
syringes than clean ones distributed to drug addicts.

Ongoing treatment with the drugs methadone and Suboxone more
than cut in half hepatitis C infections among young injection drug
users enrolled in a long-term study, a University of New Mexico
researcher reported.

Injection-drug use accounts for more than half of all new
infections of hepatitis C – a potentially deadly viral illness that
infects some 4.4 million Americans, including an estimated 32,000 to
35,000 New Mexicans.

Hepatitis C infections declined by 60 percent among
injection drug users who received long-term treatment with methadone or
Suboxone, said Kimberly Page, chief of epidemiology, biostatistics and
preventive medicine at the UNM School of Medicine.

ACR Health Prevention Services in Syracuse is looking for ways to
reduce HIV and hepatitis C infection rates in New York state prisons.

According
to federal statistics, inmates have the highest rate of HIV in New
York, compared to any other state, and many of those inmates are
co-infected with hepatitis C. To fight that, the National Black
Leadership Commission on AIDS has a campaign that emphasizes public
awareness, education and access to testing and treatment.

C. Virginia Fields, president of the commission, says one of the best places to take the campaign is prison.

Twice a week for two hours at a time, an unassuming windowless white
van parks at the intersection of Fifth and Harrison streets in
Wilmington.

Thirty-one-year-old Mike knows the van, and knows it well – it’s where he can find clean works.

For
the last seven years that van, the hub for the state’s needle exchange
program, has traveled to at-risk areas in Wilmington, serving as a clean
syringe clearinghouse for those living with a drug addiction.

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